Tuesday, February 08, 2005

On the morning of February 7, a day before the summit is to start, Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz told Israel Army Radio that he had received intelligence warnings that some militants, including Hezbollah, may try to disrupt the summit.

Due to the intelligence warnings, Israel Police moved to a level III heightened alert status, one level below a state-of-emergency.

Like clockwork, on the afternoon of February 7, rockets rained down on the northern Israeli town of Nahariya, and were immediately described by Israeli police as Katyusha rockets fired by Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon.

Later in the same day, the attack was described as the result of 'human error' involvingafailed test by an Israeli weapons manufacturer in the area. It was made clear - some might say too clear - that although the failed test took place on an IDF firing range and was by a weapons company closely associated with the IDF, the IDF had nothing to do with it.

Obviously, the IDF attempted to disrupt the summit, or even provide a reason to call it off, by faking a rocket attack by Hezbollah. It wasn't a coincidence that the Israeli Defense Minister announced the possibility of an attack in the morning, and a faked attack occurred in the afternoon. This is the usual Israeli terrorist bullshit. On times too numerous to mention, whenever Sharon needs political cover to hide some outrage he is committing a convenient 'Palestinian' attack pops up to distract the press and make the poor, poor Israelis look like victims again. This time they were caught red handed, and had to come up with the laughable excuse of 'human error' in rocket testing (you've got to be kidding!). But here's the good part, and the aspect of this whole sordid matter that inspires some optimism. They were busted, and they were busted by IDF insiders. People in the IDF was so disgusted by the trickery that they spilled the beans, resulting in the necessity of the ridiculous cover story to explain the inconvenient fact that rockets coming from an IDF firing range were landing on an Israeli town. It wouldn't do for people to find out that crazies in the IDF were willing to murder Israelis in order to stop the peace process. The good news is that there are Israelis, including Israelis in the IDF, who wouldn't let them get away with it. If Israel is ever to have peace, we need to see more of this whistleblowing.